I use these pieces chiefly because they partly correspond in truth and spirit with what I have already said. Let our friends but read the laws, and they will see what the sword of the Commonwealth is intended for. In the second article there is a grievous mistake. It says that the government has assisted us. The Marshpee Indians have always paid their full share of taxes, and very great ones they have been. They have defrayed the expense of two town meetings a year, and one of two of the white men whose presence was necessary, lived twenty-five miles off. The meetings lasted three or four days at a time, during which, these men lived upon the best, at our cost, and charged us three dollars a day, and twenty-five cents a mile, travelling expenses, going and coming into the bargain. This amounts to thirty-five dollars a trip; and as there were, as has already been said, two visitations a year, it appears that we have paid seventy dollars a year to bring one visitor, whose absence would have been much more agreeable to us than his presence. Extend this calculation to the number of seven persons, and the other expenses of our misgovernment, and perhaps some other expenditures not mentioned, and see what a sum our tax will amount to.
The next article is from the Boston Advocate of December 27, 1833.
THE MARSHPEE INDIANS.
It was stated in the Barnstable Journal the other day, and has been copied into other papers, that the Marshpee Indians were generally satisfied with their situation, and desired no change, and that the excitement, produced principally by Mr. Apes, had subsided. We had no doubt this statement was incorrect, because we had personally visited most of the tribe, in their houses and wigwams, in August last, and found but one settled feeling of wrong and oppression pervading the whole; not a new impulse depending upon Mr. Apes or any other man, but the result of the unjust laws which have ruled them like a complete despotism.
The Overseers are not so much to blame as the laws. We doubt not they have acted honestly; but, in the spirit of the laws, they have almost unavoidably exercised a stern control over the property and persons of the tribe. In fact the laws, as they now stand, almost permit the Overseers, with impunity, to sell the Indians for slaves. They can bind them out as they please, do as they please with their contracts, expel them from the plantation almost at will, and in fact use them nearly as slaves. We do not think they have intentionally done wrong to the Indians, but the whole system of government is wrong; and hence the unalterable dislike the Indians have to their Overseers. No better men could be appointed, that we know of; but the best men must play the tyrant, if they execute the present laws, designed as they are to oppress, and not to protect the poor Indians.
We have known these Indians, from our